The radical thing about it is that it’s free. It’s full of ads, grocery, meat market, small shop; it’s completely an advertiser’s paper, without the perfunctory bows to the news made by regular newspapers. But it carries several features so good, people read and talk about them every week.
“You’re the Buyers’ Guide!”
He rose, bowed. “The same.”
“I can believe it, too. The ‘Sh-sh-sh-sh’ column. The movie reviews. How do you get away with ’em?”
“I don’t. Theater owners lurk at the doors with blackjacks when rumor has it I approach. I go disguised. Why, I even have to pay my way in!”
“Brace yourself. I never go to a movie unless it’s on the ‘Morons Keep Away’ list.”
“Be still, my heart. You mean you think you’re not a moron?”
“Not so much I don’t think your Guide a good idea.”
“You grow on me.”
“Not literally, I hope. Does it make money?”
“Money? You mention a thing like money when I’m bent on expressing my soul?”
“You’re running enough ads to make money.”
“Money, she says. That’s all I hear. That’s what that superannuated, supercolossal old press we’ve got wants, too. Les—that’s my partner—says we’ve got to make money! Pooey!”
“How about the city council?”
He gave me a black look.
“That’s where our money for our next twenty new presses went.”
I knew, from the Guide’s own vitriolic columns, what it had been up against. Chain stores were cutting down their ads in the Comet to run full pages in the inexpensive Guide. The Comet had tried to push through a city ordinance making it illegal to leave broadsides (broadsides were defined as all unpaid-for printed matter) at doors. That would have put the Guide where the Comet wished it was.
But it hadn’t gone through. I could only guess the cost.
Mr. Kistler stood up, stretched, and began prowling my room: thumbing through my magazines, opening the buffet’s glass doors to look over the china appreciatively, pulling out the linen and silver drawers for brief glances.
“Nice,” he said.
“I’m beginning to think Mrs. Garr is right and it applies to everyone in the house.”
“Mrs. Garr is never right. About what?”
“She says people snoop.”
“Oh, she does, does she? Me?” He stood wide-legged in front of me, pointing a finger at his chest.
“She never mentioned you.”
“You?”
“Oh no.”
“Who, then?”
“The people who were in this apartment before me.”
“Aw nuts. They were a respectable middle-aged couple, and they couldn’t take it. Not when I brought that—Skip it. Who else?”
“The Wallers.”
“The bulky ones? No, they’re no threat.”
“Maybe. Maybe not. I saw something myself.”
“Little Bright Eyes.”
“All right, laugh. But when I came home this afternoon I am sure I heard a drawer closing in the living room. I looked in, and there was Mr. Grant sitting on the davenport. His hands shook.”
“Him? That innocent little twerp? Oh, now, sister!”
“I said you could laugh. And right after that the man came out of the cellar.”
“Well, I’ll concede you the man in the cellar.” He sat down on the couch again and observed me solemnly. “Let’s figure it out. Mrs. Garr, unbeknown to all, has the Hope diamond. It was given to her in her youth by a lover—ah, the gay and dashing Grant. Spent, burned out, and impoverished, Grant comes to steal the diamond from his erstwhile love—”
“But, ah, the villain enters,” I said. “Peering through a crack in the basement shutters, he sees Mrs. Garr fondling her incredible jewel by the furnace. She keeps it there, in a chink in the furnace. A bold plan enters the villain’s mind. No sooner is he . . .”
We were having quite a good time when Mrs. Garr came home.
—
MRS. GARR CAME HOME, tenderly escorted by Mrs. Halloran, around six o’clock. The black eyes took in Mr. Kistler pretty fast.
“I didn’t know you knew Mr. Kistler.” The voice suggested I had made the acquaintance for no good purpose.
“Oh, but she does know me now, Mrs. Garr.” Mr. Kistler stood up, beaming like a father.
“Mr. Kistler came in to—to stay with me because I had been a little startled,” I explained hastily. “You see, a man—a strange man—ran up out of the cellar. At least I saw him dash out of your bedroom—”
Mrs. Garr turned yellow and swayed. I cried: “Catch her!”
Mrs. Halloran and Mr. Kistler were close enough to ease her into the black leather chair before she toppled. Mrs. Halloran started fanning her with her handbag, which wasn’t much use; I ran for water while Mr. Kistler undid her dress at the neck.
Mrs. Garr came around quickly. But her eyes were sick with terror when she opened them.
“He go in your rooms?” she asked thickly.
“Oh no. No, indeed. No one’s been in my rooms. He came tiptoeing out of that room under the stairs and saw me, then dashed out the front door.”
“Up the cellar stairs,” she said, thickly still. She looked around at us, heavy and tired, her white hair slipping in back, only her eyes alive, with their ominous black heat.
“You stay here. You all stay here.”
She was out of the chair with surprising quickness, darting away from us into the room under the stairs. She shut the door; we heard the click of a key, the snap of a light switch.
Mr. Kistler looked at me, eyebrows more triangular than ever; then we both looked at Mrs. Halloran.
“She acts as if she had something she was frightened to death might get stolen,” I offered. “What could it be?”
Mrs. Halloran tittered and shrugged her shoulders; she looked frightened but swaggering, as if she were carrying something off with bravado. “Well, she don’t believe in banks,” she said.
“But surely she wouldn’t keep money around the house,” I began slowly. “I remember, she said something to me one day about not liking banks, too. I wonder if she could—”
Mr. Kistler pinched
